A generic stiffness measurement method for a 3-DOF cable-driven joint module

Abstract

A cable-driven module with passive spherical joint is proposed as a fundamental building block for modular cable-driven manipulators to produce compliant and intrinsically safe motions, which are suitable for the human–robot co-existing applications. Stiffness measurement is an important issue for the cable-driven manipulators. In this work, a generic measurement method for the cable-driven modules and manipulators is proposed. The proposed method does not require to measure cable tensions, making it be easier to implement than the model-based method. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by a comprehensive simulation.